The Monolith Monsters

Rocky Horror Show 

The Monolith Monsters
USA 1957
Directed by John Sherwood
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema 
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Big, black crystalline spoilers toppling your way.

After directing the third and worst of the Creature From The Black Lagoon sequels, The Creature Walks Among Us (reviewed here) John Sherwood’s next feature was The Monolith Monsters. The last time I watched this one, as part of an American DVD set, I remember thinking that this was the most ridiculous premise for a so called ‘creature feature’ I’d ever seen, with probably the least menacing and dull threat to civilisation conceived for a 1950s Universal monster movie. If indeed a bunch of non-sentient rocks could be called a monster. But I also remember quite liking the film, partially because of its silliness and also because it’s a well made piece of hokum which completely fits in with what Universal were conjuring up for the monster crowd back then in terms of the gravitas mixed in with the pseudo-scientific explanations and the ultimate cure for the threat.

Revisiting it now as the second film presented in the Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci-Fi Terror... I’d have to say that my perception of the movie is in no way altered other than, I like it even more the second time around and, via the beautiful print and transfer job in this edition.

Okay, so this is one of a few films from around that era (probably many of them from Universal) that starts off with a shot of the planet Earth suspended in space (sans clouds because, nobody had thought about the Earth being covered in clouds until years later when man travelled into space) and with a voice over narrative leading the audience into the film. This time it’s talking to us all about the phenomenon of meteorites, as they have hit our planet and others since the beginning of time (apparently, who am I to argue with that time placement?). After an extended montage of landscapes of craters etc devoted to these celestial visitors, the music swells mysteriously and the titles roll. 

Then, after one half of a local geologist team picks up a sample of rock he stumbles across in the desert, he heads back to his sleepy town situated completely out of the way in that desert but, after he gets the rock sample wet... well, when his partner comes into the office the next day, Grant Williams as David Miller, he finds loads more of the rocks in a smashed up office and his partner standing there, his lifeless body more or less turned to stone.

Meanwhile, David’s school marm of a girlfriend, Cathy Barrett, played by Lola Albright, is taking some of her kids on a field trip. One of the kids takes a rock home but then washes it. Later, she is the only survivor discovered at her home and her body is also slowly beginning to turn to stone, so she’s taken to a local hospital and placed into an iron lung while the doctors and scientists can find a cure for her condition, hopefully within eight hours or so before she also dies. 

And then, a big thunderstorm starts and it’s raining overnight in the desert, just as David and his scientist friend Professor Arthur Flanders, played by Trevor Bardette, find out that it’s water that is causing the rocks to grow and suck all the silicon out of everything around them. They realise that the rainfall means the rocks in the desert will keep toppling down a slow slope towards town and then growing again until they completely destroy the town. They think they have some breathing space to find a way of combating these completely unaware, black crystalline rocks when the rain stops but, of course, the desert sand absorbs the water which the rocks inadvertently absorb to keep growing so, once they’ve been kick started by the storm... they now aren’t going to stop. Can David and his friends stop the progress of the deadly but docile mineral before it falls on the town and, perhaps, all of civilisation? Well yeah, of course they can but, things get intense for a while.

I still love this film. Everyone in it is playing it completely straight and working hard to pretend that the threat is something to be taken much less tongue in cheek than it seems it should. At more than one point, the people expounding these silly theories are deriding the ideas as nonsense or scientific gobbledy-gook, while simultaneously investing in them as the best answers and course of action. Even the score is playing it’s part here... some of which I think is probably tracked in or re-recorded cues from other films of the time such as Creature From The Black Lagoon (if my ears and memory aren’t failing me). So every time we see a bit of rock come into contact with a bit of water and it starts bubbling up, the music goes into a full blown, histrionic stinger of a cue that might be best reserved for some much more ostentatious looking form of life ending peril. Yeah, this music made me smile so much with its excessive attempts to convince you that... these rocks are out to get you!

And the special effects, I have to say, are amazing. We see the rocks grow before our very eyes, partially as a genuine chemical reaction (I presume) and it looks pretty amazing. There’s a wonderful moment where we see the townsfolk all watching and, above them, the tumbling, crashing rocks slowly approaching in a brilliant combination of live action and effects shot which, although I knew roughly where one part of the shot finished and the other part was joined, I really couldn’t detect in terms of matte lines or anything (and, yeah, even on this new blu ray, the shot looks absolutely brilliant). 

And there you have it. A completely non-traditional kind of ‘monster’ picture with, well, it has to be said, really no monsters in it at all except faster growing geological formations but, despite the unintentional comedy of such a concept, it’s still a satisfying film and I think The Monolith Monsters would make a great addition to any B-movie themed all nighters which saw fit to include it as part of a line up. Definitely a curio but one which I still like to revisit whenever I have the opportunity. Glad it’s finally on Blu Ray... I think this might even be the film’s first UK release on a home video format?

Aurora Model Kits

The Big Glue

Aurora Model Kits
with Polar Lights, 
Moebius, Atlantis
By Thomas Graham
3rd Edition
Schiffer Publishing Ltd
ISBN 9780764352836

Subtitled with Polar Lights, Moebius, Atlantis... Aurora Model Kits is a wonderful tome which gives a complete history of the famous, American-based modelling company. Now, I never had any Aurora model kits when I was a young ‘un (or so I thought until I read this book... more on that in a little while). The company were, however, the stuff of imagination of even us UK based youngsters, because of the adverts that came up on the back of various American comics of the 1960s and 70s and also, of course, because of the many pop culture references to the kits they were known for, especially their famous models based on various Universal Monsters. 

Now, I never had any of their Universal Monsters (which I even have captured, in somewhat badly printed monotone likenesses, on an extremely limited set of trading cards based on them) and I always assumed that this was because the models never made it over to these shores but, since my mind was thrown into doubt about that (again, I’ll get there in a little while), I’m guessing my parents just didn’t want me to have them after all the furore and fall out of scaring all the other infant school kiddies with my drawings of dancing skeletons. So this book is very much, for me, scratching an itch of something I never got to own.

And it’s a truly fantastic, coffee table book which is unbelievable value for money considering the production values on the thing... not to mention the many beautiful full colour photos of, not just the various kits themselves but also prototypes of models that never made it onto the production line. 

Starting out in a garage in Brooklyn, the company had a fairly brief but lucrative run, lasting from 1950 to only 1977, when the writing was definitely on the wall as the people who took over the company obviously had no idea, it seems to me, as to what they were doing. They were a plastics company who converted the big failure of their plastic coat hanger products into a huge, overnight success. When the inadequate coat hangers left them with no more orders and a surplus of stock, one of the employees realised that you could make a toy bow and arrow out of the hangers, which sold by the bucket load. Then they went into their first model kits, starting off with two knock offs of another company’s kits.

As the book goes on, we get a complete history of the company, some nice stories about the various partners who ran the show (including the clashing egos and how that also contributed to the creative mojo of the products) and also some stuff about the various box artists whose powerful paintings of planes, automobiles and tanks etc graced the covers of the kit boxes. As well as an insight into the often unsuccessful attempts to infiltrate the general toys market (while the ‘hobby’ line of kits was often going very strongly... as were their slot car racing toys, which are mentioned often but not really covered within the scope of this book). 

The book also covers things like examining the pros and cons of different metals for the molds and also how various re-released models might sometimes be tied in to a current movie title and promoted as such, like their Viking Long Shipbeing resurrected and promoted when the Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis movie The Vikings was released into cinemas. 

And, of course, it gets into their lucrative figure kit models and the success of things like their Universal Monsters(which absolutely nobody at the company believed in and of which a small production run was initially made to appease one of the partners... for the full and satisfying story, read the book). It also talks about the golden age of modelling which, for example, accounted for nationwide sales of model kits to the tune of $224 million by 1967. It also tells of the demise of the company and the ‘hobby industry’ in America, as children chose to spend thier time playing video games when they were released into the wild, rather than sticking small pieces of plastic to each other. 

A highlight of the book, for me, was the slight memory jog when I found, I did indeed own an Aurora kit as a kid after all. That wonderful, intricate and endlessly fascinating model of Spider-Man perched on a wooden railing and webbing a floored Kraven turns out to have been an Aurora kit. And, of course, I also remember seeing the Mr. Spock VS an alien snake monster thingy on shelves in toy shops when I was a youngster (always wanted to build that one). 

The book also covers the resurrection and re-issues (and marked improvements) of many of the Aurora line models in recent decades, by companies such as those mentioned on the cover of the book... Polar Lights, Moebius and Atlantis. And finishes it all up with an “Illustrated Directory of Aurora Plastic Kits” totalling nearly one hundred pages in it’s own right. 

And it’s a really wonderful story of a once great company... not to mention endlessly illuminating and, of course, entertaining by allowing the reader to wallow in the nostalgia of days long gone by. Of the book I have only two criticisms... 

Much is made of the various instruction booklets to the kits but none are pictured here. Secondly... the photos in the directory section could have done with being a lot larger (I wouldn’t have minded wading through another hundred or more pages if the pictures would have been friendlier to my eyesight, for sure). But, yeah, these are minor criticisms and I have to say I would hands down recommend Aurora Model Kits with Polar Lights, Moebius, Atlantis to anybody who remembers such plastic delights from their youth. I absolutely loved this book and it looks really beautiful, with some nice spot varnishing on both outer covers. Definitely a necessary purchase for all you kit-heads out there, I would say.

Dirty Harry

Punk, rocked!

Dirty Harry
USA 1971 Directed by Don Siegel
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Dirty Harry and the homicidal maniac. Harry’s the one with the badge.
Poster Tagline.

You don't assign him to murder cases - you just turn him loose.
Alternate Poster Tagline.

Well okay then. I’ve not seen Dirty Harry in about 40 years so it was due time for a revisit, I think. I’m a little more impressed with it now than I was when I first saw it in the late 1970s/early 80s on television but, I liked it enough to see all the sequels at the time (catching the last two of the five on their first run cinema releases). This one’s directed by classic Hollywood director Don Siegel (who I will always remember best for the original 1950s version of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers... reviewed here) and stars Clint Eastwood as the titular Inspector Harry Callahan... who these days, in real life, probably wouldn’t be on a police force for very long (although, since writing this and seeing what’s going on with ICE in the US of late... maybe he would).

With the background turmoil of a load of assassinations, the Miranda rights, the Vietnam war and a general feeling of overall descent in the USA... Dirty Harry came out just at the right time. The character was, perhaps, not necessarily an antidote to the political turmoil of the times but certainly someone who highlighted the increasing sense of futility the general public were feeling at the time. At least that’s what I think and I certainly suspect that would account for the high box office take on this one. 

Harry is a judge, jury and executioner who is much more concerned with cutting through the red tape and upholding justice, rather than doggedly following the law (which anyone who has done any time on jury service, would recognise are two entirely different things). Clint Eastwood does really well in this one and deserves the iconic status that this film cemented for him in American cinema (following the equally iconic portrayals of his spaghetti western characters for director Sergio Leone in the 1960s). Dirty Harry, like most detective and crime stories, transplants the lone hero figure associated with the mythic American western and continues to lionise this style of character at a time which was ripe to challenge authority in an urban setting. To say the film and lead character was influential is perhaps, an understatement. Not just in films either. The comic book character Judge Dredd, for example, would surely not exist in the form he first appeared in without the legacy of Dirty Harry... just as Johnny Alpha, aka Strontium Dog, would not have existed without the influence of those Leone westerns.

The film looks great, too. Starting off with a series of scroll downs on a memorial stone to represent the San Francisco police who have given their lives in the line of duty, the film quickly establishes the villain, the Scorpio killer (inspired by the real life Zodiac killer), played by Andrew Robinson (who Star Trek fans will be know for his regular role of Garrick in Deep Space Nine, of course). We get the sniper rifle panning around the urban jungle where he shoots a woman swimming in a roof top pool, Lalo Shifrin’s landmark score already doing some heavy lifting in establishing an off-kilter theme to represent the twisted mind of the killer. When Harry goes to investigate, through the opening credits, there are some really nice, unusual angles as we watch Clint Eastwood’s character climb a cooling tower to figure out where the shot came from. Seeing it in its intended wide screen aspect ratio, which I probably wouldn’t have when it was first screened on TV, the film’s beautiful shot design and fluid camera movement is really effective.

This continues throughout the course of the film as Clint’s gum chewing hero goes about his business. The director also pitches different textures against each other in aesthetically pleasing ways, such as when half of the screen is the front of a building with nothing going on, while the other half is Clint walking away from the character, up an alleyway in long shot. It’s good stuff. 

There are also some nice instances of visual shorthand in the movie, cleverly built to tell a piece of story with no dialogue or further clarification needed, such as when a shot of a cigarette falling into a pile outside a car door shows us instantly that the driver has been sitting in the car, with the motor running, for a substantial amount of time. There are a few regrettable moments where, for instance, various people are standing still in the street to watch the shooting of the film, which the director presumably hopes the audience won’t notice but, even so, it’s a tremendously good looking movie and, seeing it in its original aspect ratio really helps it. 

It’s become a cliche now but, this may well have been one of the first movies to feature a character running around from phone booth to phone booth in a city, reacting to the demands of the killer... although I suspect this was a phenomenon on TV before this. It’s well done though, with the majority of the sequence utilising no music until, in a nice piece of soundtrack spotting, Schifrin’s powerful score kicks in for the climax of that particular sequence. And even the ending of the film, where Harry repeats his famous “Did he fire five shots or six?” speech, has a final result which mirrors the corpse in the water at the aftermath of the first bullet shot fired at the start of the picture. 

At the end of the film, Harry mimics Gary Cooper at the end of High Noon (reviewed by me here) by throwing away his cop badge into the same river as the bad guy he’s just dispatched and turning his back on authority for good. One wonders, if the studio would have known the film would be so popular as to require a sequel which kinda ignores this final act, whether that sequence would have stayed in. Several actors including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra turned down the main lead on this one and, one also wonders if they would have, if they’d known how much the film would capture the zeitgeist of the times, declined the role as they did. Certainly, John Wayne obviously regretted it, compensating by making his own versions of the urban western with McQ and Brannigan. 

This film didn’t put Clint Eastwood on the map, he was there already but, it certainly cemented his reputation as a number one box office draw and, honestly, I’m really looking forward to revisiting the other four movies in this series, which I got for my birthday* in the Blu Ray box set Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry Collection so, yeah, more to come here. 

*over a year ago now, since time of writing.

The Thief Of Baghdad 1961

Ghost of Baghdad

The Thief Of Baghdad
aka Il ladro di Bagdad
Directed by Arthur Lubin & Bruno Vailati
Italy/France 1961 
Titanus
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Well, while I was certainly expecting the 1961 Italian/French co-production of The Thief Of Baghdad to be somewhat less interesting than its predecessors, I had at least expected a trashy, action packed peplum which would entertain me no end. Especially since it stars former Hercules and action muscle man Steve Reeves in the titular role of Karim. Instead... I found myself mostly just feeling like I was sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Now this was my first Steve Reeves movie (still waiting for the Hercules films to be released in their correct aspect ratios in English friendly versions on Blu Ray so I can see them) and I was maybe expecting a little more from him. He was, in all honesty, a little wooden but, at the same time, he was perfect as a leading man presence in these kinds of things so, I am still looking forward to seeing him in other movies. But this was a bad first impression (even though this movie seems to be a much loved film on the IMDB). 

Okay, so the plot is almost identical as the Douglas Fairbanks version (which I reviewed here.) except it’s almost half the length and, yeah, it’s in vibrant colour (for the most part). Many of the special effects don’t seem nearly as good as either the silent version or the 1940s version (reviewed here), it seems to me. Although, that being said, I loved that, when Karim mounts the flying horse Pegasus for the first time and it takes off in to the air, both he and the magical steed both turned into a cartoon version of themselves for the long shot, in exactly the same way that Kirk Alyn would start flying in the two 1940s Superman serials (which really need to be upgraded to Blu Ray people. Come on you slow poke companies!). So that was kind of charming. 

Karim’s love interest, played by Giorgia Moll, is fine in this but, it seems to me that she’s somewhat underused and the character is less credibly drawn than the equivalent characters in the previous movie versions. Considering she’s kind of the lynch-pin of the action and the quest for ‘the blue rose’ that follows.

I was hoping that, once we got into the quest section of the film, it might pick up a little but... dunno, I found it just as dull as the rest of the movie, truth be told. Also, one of the elements which have been added to the story here, namely a magic ghost helping Karim on his quest... seems a ‘convenient’ way out of trouble for the script writers most of the time. However, once the identity of the ghost is revealed at the end of the picture, his presence in front of several people in an earlier part of the film just, from what I can see, makes for a massive continuity problem within the story too but, honestly, I’m not going to bother analysing this thing too much. 

Unfortunately, the great Carlo Rustichelli’s score for the movie seems a little lacking too and, yeah, short review and all but I was really disappointed in this third movie in Imprint’s astonishing new The Thief Of Bagdad set, I’m sad to say. Especially when compared to another peplum I revisited six months or so before, namely the great Mario Bava’s Hercules In The Haunted World (review coming soon). As you would expect, Imprint have done an amazing restoration job on the film and, yeah, a big thank you to them for putting these things out, for sure. But I won’t be recommending the third movie in this set to anyone I know, alas.

The Thief Of Bagdad (1940)

Jaffar Takes

The Thief Of Bagdad
UK/USA 1940 
Directed by Ludwig Berger, 
Michael Powell & Tim Whelan
London Film Productions
Imprint  Blu Ray Zone B

Please note: One day before publishing this review, I discovered I'd already reviewed this movie 16 years ago. However, this is a more detailed account of it and, it turns out, my tastes must have changed a lot over the years... I take less prisoners with this one. I will leave both reviews up in the index so you can take your pick but, this review is how I feel about this movie now. 

So the second movie of Imprint’s beautifully restored box set of The Thief Of Bagdad films is the 1940 version produced by Alexander Korda. This was my father’s favourite film but, alas, it arrived too late for him to look at it one last time. But I wanted to watch it again to try and figure out if I was missing anything from previous viewings. I’ve never felt this was a truly great film but, my dad did so...

Yeah. Okay... this is about the best way yet to see this landmark and rightfully respected film adaptation, purporting to be sourced from certain stories in the varous tales (and titles) of the 101 Arabian Nights. And it’s a fine film, to be sure. It looks amazing although, some of the effects, with it being the first colour film to employ blue screen techniques, look a little dated and wobbly to me. I say this after loving the effects work on the Douglas Fairbanks version, which I reviewed here. 

I find this version a little slow though but, the narrative has an interesting structure in that it flashes back from a little way into the story to tell how the former king, played by the quite charming John Justin, was made blind by the evil Jaffar, played by Conrad Veidt. And also why his friend, the actual thief of Bagdad, played here by Sabu, was turned into his seeing eye dog, again courtesy of the antagonist. 

We learn that Jaffar needs to find these two to restore the consciousness of the love interest, played by June Duprez and how, after the film catches up with itself and this happens, the former king and thief are again outcast and trying to find a way to get back to Jaffar, while Jaffar murders the young lady’s father, played by Miles Malleson (who also helped write the movie) in their absence. This involves mostly Sabu in adventures featuring a djinni (played with a large personality by Rex Ingram), a giant spider battled on its web, a blue all-seeing eye as a crystal and a purloined flying carpet. But there’s also a mechanical, Pegasus-style flying horse and a multi armed automaton of a blue skinned lady with murderous intent. 

And it’s fine with the actors all very good and charming but, alas, I did feel it a little slow and less adventuresome than I would probably have liked. But it’s not without its many good points, not least of all being the magnificent score of Miklós Rózsa... which will probably call to mind many of that composer’s other scores, including one with a similar soundscape, being his score for the later movie The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed by me here). Sinbad actually gets a mention in this movie but, alas, we don’t quite get to meet him in this particular tale. 

Now the film tends to jump around a bit with, it seemed to me, scenes which could have been in there left to the imagination. I am putting this down to a constantly changing script and trouble during filming (the primary director was the great Michael Powell but, as you can see, three directors are credited). Also, the film started off being shot in Great Britain but, it was during The Blitz so the production had to relocate to America some way through. Sabu had grown a couple of inches in the interim period between shoots so, all of his scenes had to be reshot again in the US. You can often tell the scenes which were shot in each location because, in the scenes shot on set in America, the women all have their blouses tightly buttoned up to the top where, in continuity defying fashion, the UK scenes are a lot looser with the way the costumes are worn on the ladies in question. 

It’s leisurely but it’s still a bit of a romp and it obviously struck a chord with my dad when he first saw it (he watched it at least once a decade I think) and I’d still recommend it to friends to watch this version. But that’s me just about done on this one, I think. Other than to reiterate that this new restoration of The Thief Of Bagdad on Blu Ray looks absolutely superb (and that might well be why some of the effects work looks a bit clunky I suspect... it probably wasn’t supposed to be seen this sharp on technology this good). So if you are a fan of this film... this is currently the best iteration of it to buy... although I suspect there will be a US and UK restored version arriving on their respective shores before another decade has passed. 

The Thief Of Bagdad 1924

Arabian Heights

The Thief Of Bagdad 
USA 1924 Directed by Raoul Walsh
United Artists/Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Five years after Douglas Fairbanks formed United Artists... with Mary Pickford (to whom he was married), Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith... he got very enthusiastic about doing this huge, expensive epic of a film, The Thief Of Bagdad. This is the first film featured in Imprint’s new The Thief Of Bagdad three movie Blu Ray restoration boxed edition. A couple of weeks before he died, my dad expressed a more than passing interest in, when he got well enough again, rewatching his favourite movie, the 1940s Korda version of The Thief Of Bagdad. Unbeknownst to him, I’d already pre-ordered this set direct from Imprint in Australia (because the pound to Australian dollar rate is wonderful at the moment) for him as a Christmas present. Alas, my father passed away before it arrived and he was in no real state to watch it anyway but, my mother and I are now watching it for him, hoping that some kind of spirit of my dad is somehow watching it with us.

Now, I’ve not seen a movie with Fairbanks in it before and, while I can certainly admire his physical prowess and understand why he was so popular in his day, I found his acting to be a little more over-the-top than was maybe strictly necessary. It’s more what you think of as a stereotype of silent acting as opposed to what my actual experience of what silent movie acting can often be. Nevertheless, I also found him quite endearing and don’t begrudge him his popularity because... yeah... he’s still pretty entertaining to watch. However, another actor in the film does contrast with him in terms of style to his detriment... but more on her in a minute. 

I have to say, the prospect of sitting through over two and a half hours of this movie seemed daunting but, no, I was caught up in it straight away and it really didn’t seem that long at all. You can see why the film was so expensive to make... it looks truly epic and the sets are amazing. For example, the wonderful gate of Bagdad which splits open in four different directions, revealing giant teeth holding it together when locked, is absolutely marvellous and just one of many inventive moments in this movie (it certainly wouldn’t look out of place in the first Flash Gordon serial, reviewed here, made over a decade later). 

Fairbanks’ thief character (and his partner in crime, played wonderfully comically by Snitz Edwards) is set up in a long series of scenes highlighting his ingenious and skilled thievery (including some nice use of a magic rope in the early scenes which, honestly, the character shouldn’t have been so quick to throw away because it would have been useful on his later adventures in the movie). Anyhow, he becomes infatuated, in a series of incidents too convoluted to cover here, with the Sultan’s daughter, played by Julanne Johnston and, in the last hour of the film (with his character believed dead by all but his romantic interest), he competes with three princes to find and bring back the rarest treasure on Earth, to give to the lady and win her hand in mariage... specifically competing against the villainous Mongol prince, played by Sôjin Kamiyama (in a role which I can’t help but think may have influenced Alex Raymond on his newspaper strip creation of the Flash Gordon villain Ming The Merciless). 

The villain is also helped by the treacherous slave girl in the Sultan’s palace... who is played by Fairbanks’ big discovery and who is the actress I was talking about earlier, in a relatively small (spread out over the length of the movie) but pivotal role... 

So... when Fairbanks was trying to cast the film, he saw the film The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) and so he got in contact with the leading lady from that small production, Anna May Wong, to fulfil this role in his movie. And it pretty much shot her to fame and kickstarted her career properly. And she really does a great job here too. She also indulges in the essential style of silent movie acting where everything needs to be relayed with gestures and expressions but, she’s much more subtle and understated here than, for example, Fairbanks’ overuse of his hand making grabbing motions every time his character sees something he wants to steal. She’s pretty amazing in this, it has to be said and, yeah, a nice surprise because, when I pre-ordered this set, I hadn’t read her biography as yet and didn’t realise she was in this until I’d read that (my review of that book can be found here).

Anyway, back to the adventures... while his rivals pick up, respectively, a magic carpet, a magic eye/jewel and a magic, healing apple... Fairbank’s thief goes through several quests culminating in his recovery of a magic chest, which gives him pretty much anything he wishes for. So he braves The Valley Of Fire... timing his jumps over volcanic pits which pretty much pre-dates modern video game design... kills creatures in The Valley Of Monsters (slitting open the chest of one, we see the blood splash down in a moment that definitely marks this film out as a pre-code movie), braves The Cavern Of Enchanted Trees, meets The Old Man Of The Midnight Sea and then rides a pegasus-like horse from The Abode Of The Winged Horse to the Moon Kingdom to retrieve both his chest and a cloak of invisibility. All this before rushing back to Bagdad and conjuring a battalion of soldiers to defeat the secret army the Mongol Prince has raised in Bagdad for the conquest of the city. 

And it’s great stuff... some of the special effects such as the magic carpet, done practically by lifting a platform on cables and flying it over the heads of the people of the set of Bagdad, look absolutely amazing and put to shame effects done differently over the years since this one hit cinemas. And though some of the creatures look a little fake and the wings on the horse a little less powerful than you would expect, I was completely bowled over by the spectacle of this film and enjoyed every second of it. Carl Davis’ ‘new score’, which has recycled bits of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, including lots of repetitive steals from Scheherazade, really upped the game too (I love that whole symphonic suite anyway) although, the use of The Flight Of The Bumblebee seemed a little too on the nose, it has to be said.

All in all, though... great film and a wonderful transfer from Imprint films. I will wholeheartedly recommend this version of The Thief Of Bagdad to anyone I know and I look forward now to revisiting the Korda version in this set, along with the Steve Reeves version which I haven’t yet seen. 

Night Of The Big Heat

All You Can Heat Buffet

Night Of The Big Heat
aka Night Of The Burning Damned (US)
aka Night Of The Burning Doomed (US TV)
Directed by Terence Fisher
UK 1967 
Planet Films Distribution/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone B

 Warning: Minor spoilers.

Okay then. I’d not seen Night Of The Big Heat before 88 Films issued this new Blu Ray transfer, although I’ve got it in the back of my mind that it probably played on British TV a fair amount during the 1970s and 80s. This one is set on a small island called Fara where, in the middle of winter... and at odds with the rest of the country... the inhabitants are suffering a huge heat wave. Patrick Allen plays novelist Jeff Callum, who is on the island writing his new book and who runs the local pub alongside his wife, Frankie (played by Allen’s real life wife Sarah Lawson). Then Jane Merrow turns up as his new secretary, Angela, who had a fling with him in her past and wants to reconnect... plus take no prisoners as far as his wife is concerned. 

This all goes on against a backdrop of strange goings on at the island, with the big tropical heat just a symptom of something else that’s happening. There are instances of strange, high pitched whirrings in the air sometimes and this is usually a prelude to somebody being confronted by something off screen and then being burned to death, as is the case when a character played by Kenneth Cope runs away after attempting to rape Angela... only to be confronted with ‘something unusual’. 

Trying to get to the bottom of it all is Godfrey Hanson and his amazing scientific instruments, played deliberately unemotionally by the great Christopher Lee. And, billed as a guest star  (he is only in a few scenes dotted about the movie at various points) is the equally great Peter Cushing, as the local Dr. Vernon Stone. Shenanigans ensue when Jeff and Godfrey form an uneasy alliance after the latter shares his theory that the heat is a by-product of beings from another planet coming to the island as the vanguard of an invading species, who need the heat in order to survive. 

And, it’s a film on which I’m now very torn. On the one hand, it has all the makings of a good ‘comfort horror film’ and I suspect it’s one I shall come back to every now and again. On the other hand, there are a lot of problems with it, tempered by the heat being a good excuse for Jane Merrow to run an ice cube over her half exposed torso and neck. I mean, some of the dialogue and story ideas are awful, which is strange considering it’s supposed to be an adaptation of a novel by John Lymington. Apparently it was rewritten from scratch a day or two before filming. It kinda shows.

And the film also suffers from some very low budget and not terribly effective monsters. Most of the time the monsters are unseen and thus create a certain amount of suspense and jeopardy until the big reveal. Unfortunately, the big reveal is just light pulsing rocks looking like they’ve been constructed from canvass. So, yeah, not good. 

The other problem is... the body count in the film wouldn’t be nearly as bad if some of the characters just acted on common sense rather than whatever the heck they do here. For example, people are practically going off to their deaths in ways that can be easily foreseen and, I suspect, easily escaped from...

In one scene,  for instance, Godfrey uses his walkie talkie to contact everyone in the inn to tell them to turn off the lights as it’s what is drawing the creatures to people. And so a token is made of showing some of the characters doing just that but... do they heck!?! When we return to the scene of the people in the inn, they have clearly left a few lights on... obviously to light the shot, I get it but, yeah, it makes no sense by this point in the film and it’s almost like the various main protagonists are trying to get themselves killed by doing the lamest things ever. So, yeah, I have no sympathy for their actions throughout the film, for sure. 

But, the pace is nicely fitting for the film and it has a kind of interesting score by Malcolm Lockyer. Now, I don’t know Lockyer at all apart from his music for the first Doctor Who movie (reviewed here) but, I have to say, I recognised the style immediately as sharing the same DNA of that score and was waiting for his name to come up in the opening credits. Which is another thing that pushes it into comfort movie territory for me, for sure. 

The denouement of Night Of The Big Heat is abrupt and totally unsatisfying, it has to be said. If you thought the ending of the movie version of The Day Of The Triffids was bad then, yeah, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So, all in all I would have to say that, in many ways the film is really terrible but, I found myself thoroughly entertained by it so, I was very happy to have 88 Films’ wonderful transfer hitting shops. It’s not one I’d recommend to everybody but fans of studios like Hammer and Amicus should maybe try and catch this one, for sure. 

OSS117 - Double Agent

The Assassination Game

OSS117 - Double Agent
aka Niente rose per OSS 117
aka OSS117 Murder For Sale
France/Italy 1968
Directed by Renzo Cerrato, 
Jean-Pierre Desagnat & André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Well this is going to be another very short OSS117 review but I can finally say I’m very disappointed with Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set, OSS117 Five Film Collection, which collects the films made about this character in the 1960s and which, in the case of this film, is based on Jean Bruce’s novel Pas de roses pour OSS 117. Not because Kino Lorber have done a bad job... on the contrary, the transfers and prints on these things look fantastic. I think it’s more that these bandwagon competitors to the Bond franchise are just, mainly, as dull as ditchwater. And I can’t blame the actors either. 

OSS117 - Double Agent is about Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, alias OSS117, infiltrating the crime syndicate known as ‘The Organisation’ (no, not that organisation... a much smaller, fictional one) in order to foil their plan of assassinating people for money. Why the secret service are targetting this organisation in particular was, I think, passed off with an attempted explanation at the start which I really didn’t understand and it felt like a bit of an excuse to be honest. The plot goes from silly to worse as OSS117 is injected with a poison which will kill him once every 24 hours unless he has the next stage of the antidote, as the way his new employers try to keep their hired help on a leash and more pliable to their assassination missions. Hubert gets involved with a few ladies, has a few fist fights and eventually saves the day in the most anticlimactic, throwaway manner possible... which you wouldn’t expect from a film populated with some quite good actors, to be honest. 

For this fifth and final of the 1960s screen outings for the character, the lead actor has once again been replaced. John Gavin is playing him here and there’s even a reference... and a jokey dig... to the change in the male lead this time as one character describes him as having had plastic surgery to look like a specific killer and he gets the reply, “He’s much better looking now.” I guess it serves as some kind of testament to the acting talent that even Gavin... who was later signed on to take over from George Lazenby as James Bond, starting with Diamonds Are Forever (reviewed here), before Sean Connery decided to come back on board at the eleventh hour... can’t help save this film. The script and pacing is so awful. 

Nor can some of the other exciting names in the cast liven things up either... such as George Eastman playing a splendid henchman to the arch villain, played by future Bond villain Curd Jürgens, the wonderful Rosalba Neri and, five years after trying to kill Connery’s 007 in Thunderball (reviewed here), the stunning Luciana Paluzzi. I am guessing Paluzzi may just have been cast for her former association with the Bond film because, bizarrely, she disappears from the narrative about a third of the way in and is never mentioned again, even when it’s logical that OSS117 should run into her again at the close of the picture. 

Replacing composer Michel Magne for this one is the late but very great Piero Piccioni but, it has to be said, as nice as this score is as a standalone listen on CD, even Piccioni can’t save this one. I have to wonder at producer/director André Hunebelle’s decisions about this. He has two great composers on these films and it’s like he’s ordered them to play almost against the images and make them feel somewhat antiseptic and inappropriate to what’s going on in the film. As I said, Piccioni’s music sounds very easy on the ears but, really, does nothing to improve this one. A John Barry score would have really helped liven this picture up but, yeah, I have to wonder how both Magne and Piccioni seemed to both turn up such ‘out of place’ scores for these movies. 

And that really is me done with OSS117 Double Agent. I said it was going to be a short review and I can’t think of anything really good to say about the experience. The film feels somewhat lethargic and has a script which really lets everyone down. I can’t, in all consciousness, recommend this one to anybody. Possibly the dullest eurospy movie I’ve seen, I would guess. 

Shelter

S’Hell Ter Pay

Shelter
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
USA/UK 2026
Black Bear
UK Cinema Release Print

Just a quick shout out on the latest Jason Statham action film... not quick because it’s not good but because it’s a nice, solid, well acted vehicle which hits most of the right spots and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Shelter sees The Stath, as an ex-assassin called Mason, living covertly in a lighthouse on an island with a young girl, Jessie, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach, being boated over by her uncle once a week to leave supplies for him. She never sees Statham’s character and wonders what his relationship is to her family (she doesn’t even know who her own father was and has been living with her uncle since she can remember). 

Then, one day, she nearly dies on a fierce storm trying to return to her uncle’s boat (which sinks and takes him to his death) and is rescued and resuscitated by Mason. Here starts the almost but not quite True Grit style relationship between the two characters. Then, to get urgent medical supplies, Mason goes to the mainland and gets recognised by the government’s illegally operating facial recognition software (which targets him as someone else, deliberately), run by Billy Nighy’s villainous ‘off the grid’ ex head of British Intelligence and the rest of the movie is a manhunt as Mason and Jessie are on the run while an elite killer and lots of other human problems are hurled at them, as Mason tries to find some way to get Jessie to safety. 

And it’s all very nicely done. The characters are all likeable and, while you’ve seen the whole ‘child bonding with a trained killer who has a heart of gold’ storyline before... because Jason Statham and Bodhi Rae Breathnach have good chemistry together, it’s easy to ignore the cliché and let yourself be entertained by two good actors. 

Added to this, the action scenes are a touch more naturalistic than in something like, say, The Transporter and they hit harder, especially when contrasted with the two central characters. For instance, a car chase sequence between just two cars is well shot and the chaotic and almost clunky brutality of the sequence works really well when juxtaposed with the sensibilities of the two characters reacting to the situation. Like I said, a solid action piece. And it helps to have people like Bill Nighy and Daniel Mays on hand to lend the piece a little gravitas too (both are equally excellent in their supporting roles).

The one big surprise for me is where the story goes or, rather, where the story fails to go. It seemed obvious from the start that Jessie is, surely, actually Mason’s daughter and he’s been keeping her safe by leaving her with her uncle and, although it seems the obvious story choice, it’s never actually revealed here. Maybe because it seems too obvious or, perhaps, maybe they’re leaving that moment for a possible sequel (the film is definitely geared towards a sequel being a possibility in the last scene). In a way, I’m kinda glad they held back that revelation because, it’s way too telegraphed throughout the rest of the film so, yeah, maybe a casual reveal in a follow up movie would be the best way to go into that (if, indeed, we get one). 

And that’s really me done already on Shelter. I tend to like Jason Statham action movies and this one is another of his good ones. If you’re up for The Stath punching and shooting people for an hour or so (after a slow but sure section of character building) then you should have a good time with this one. I’ll certainly be looking out for a Blu Ray at some point.

The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Life’s A Dragon, 
Then You Die

The Mummy - 
Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
United States/Germany/China/Canada 
2008 Directed by Rob Cohen
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

We were all smacking our lips in anticipation of a third film in the Rick O’ Connell Mummy series after the brilliance of The Mummy (reviewed here) and the pretty great follow up The Mummy Returns (reviewed here). And we were all dreadfully disappointed in what finally came out in cinemas. Stephen Sommers, who wrote and directed the previous two installments, did not direct this movie... other than he’s listed as one of the producers. I hate to say it but... it really shows. I don’t know why he wasn’t involved but his 2004 movie Van Helsing, where he further expanded his reimagining of the classic Universal monster movies, was not treated kindly by critics or box office alike. I don’t know why because I thought that particular take was also pretty good but, I don’t know, maybe that’s why he didn’t do the third Mummy movie. He is sorely missed in this sequel. 

Now, the film isn’t a total mess... it certainly works as a typical action adventure movie of the 2000s but, that’s where this film also fails big time. The thing about the previous two installments is that they were both something very special... so expectations were high this would deliver a similar concoction and, to be fair, a lot of the ingredients which made those two a huge success are present and relatively correct. There’s a huge element missing though and, that element would be... fun. Despite an overemphasis perhaps on the humour found in the first two, this film is not the entertaining romp it should have been and falls flat a lot of the time. That being said, there are one or two notable things in the film and, honestly, it’s not the cast’s fault for sure.

We only have two returning actors from the first film present and correct here... that would be Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and John Hannah as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan. And they’re as good as they can be with this script... as are all the other actors. Another character returns from the previous film, Rick and Evie’s son Alex but, of course, since this is set halfway through the next decade again (each Mummy move in this series is set in a different decade) and Alex is supposed to be considerably older and grown up, he couldn’t be played by the same actor (as this was only about seven years since the last film). Instead they get Luke Ford, who makes a not bad stab at this and even, somehow, manages to have some of the same character traits of the child version from that last story. I say somehow because, character consistency is not high on the priority with the next actor I’ll talk about... again, not her fault.

Okay, so the great Rachel Weisz did not, for reasons known best to her (with many different reported explanations for her absence but I think I believe her when she says she didn’t like the script), return for this sequel. However, the character of Evelyn is all present and correct and the original actress was replaced in this film by Maria Bello. And she does a great job so I mean it as no disrespect to say that, in this role, she is no Miss Weisz. Now, one of the problems I have with her is that she is playing it in a much different manner to the character we’ve come to know. That decision could be defended by remembering that, in the last movie, Evelyn was resurrected from the dead as both herself and the daughter of the murdered Pharaoh in the first film... so a slightly different personality could be a valid choice... if that fact were at all referenced in this one but, nope, not much (if anything) is said about it (this time it’s her husband who gets killed and then brought back to life). She does get a nice line of dialogue though... which I’ll come back to in a minute. 

For the record, both Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr declined to return for this film also... so the original script must have been pretty different from what we ended up with. 

Two other big actors in this movie are both kung fu legends in their own country... Jet Li as the villainous Dragon Emperor himself and future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. Both are great but, come on... another reason people were chomping at the bit for this movie was that we wanted to see them both put their kung fu skills to use (and a ten minute fight scene between the two would have been most welcome). It would be an understatement to say that neither has a chance to shine in this one... especially in Yeoh’s case. 

Right... there are a few nice things. One is that we are re-introduced to Evelyn at a book reading of her latest novel, based on the second of her adventures. When someone asks her if the character in her book is based on her, Bello’s face is revealed and she says... “Honestly, I can say she's a completely different person.” Which is a nice and cheeky nod to the audience (pretty much the only one in the film, I’ll get to that) that she is a different actress taking over the role. It’s the exact same kind of metatextual comment on casting that George Lazenby delivers at the end of the pre-credits sequence in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) when he turns to the camera and says, “This never happened to the other fellow.” So... a nice moment. 

The only other nice thing in this movie... for me... asides from a nod to the first two films by having the name of Jonathan’s night club be “Imhotep’s”... is the inclusion of a small bunch of abominable snowmen... aka yetis... who help out our merry band of heroes at a crucial time. They’re nicely done although, I’ve no idea how two of the creatures can make a visual reference to the game of American Football... to be sure. Maybe try not to think about that too hard. 

A curious thing is that, when Jet Li’s character is fully resurrected, he can take on various forms. The two things he shape shifts into seem curious choices. One is a three headed dragon which bears an uncanny resemblance to King Ghidorah in the original Godzilla films and the other creature he changes into seems to slightly resemble King Caesar, from that same cycle of Godzilla films so... I dunno... I’m surprised the studio didn’t get sued over this. Maybe the director was secretly trying to pitch for a Godzilla reboot at the time? Who knows but... anyone who is into their kaiju eiga would surely get a jolt at seeing these creatures here.

As I was watching the film... I was trying to figure out why it just doesn’t work. There’s loads of humour (which mostly falls flat for me... unlike the other two movies), the action set pieces are well put together, the actors are all good and Randy Eidelman’s score for this (although partially replaced by stuff from John Debney, it would seem) is sweeping and fine... if not a patch on the scores provided for the earlier films by Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. I think, for me, the film loses out in terms of the script and the way the humour is played. The script is really stating the obvious and explaining every last thing to the audience and capitalising it... me and my father looked at each other this time when a particularly stupid line (one of the unintentionally stupid lines) came up. And the other problem with it is that, unlike its predecessors, the audience aren’t let in on the joke. Asides from the “different person altogether” line, there are none of the sly winks to the audience that the other two had. It feels like its taking itself too seriously and, consequently, it never really gets us on its side... it’s just not as entertaining as either previous installment and... yeah... it’s just a bit of a let down.

No further films were made (as yet) in this series although, the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy (reviewed here) does include the book of the dead from the first film as a visual reference in one scene... so it’s technically taking place in the same universe. A fourth one featuring an Aztec Mummy was planned but never came to fruition... again, as yet. As for how I stand on this... well, for me, The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor certainly hasn’t grown on me. It was as much of a disappointment this time around as the previous times I saw it so, yeah, if you only see this one, don’t miss out on the first two just because this is not up to scratch. I hope someday the original writer/director and cast will come back to do just one more but... who knows if that will happen. 

The Music Man

7T6 Trombones 
With A Capital T

The Music Man
Directed by Morton DaCosta
USA 1962 
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone A 

I’d never seen one of my dad’s favourite musicals, The Music Man, before... although, of course, the song 76 Trombones is obviously a musical earworm to this day. Indeed, the film and stage show is such a well known piece that, even though I’d not seen it, I was easily able to recognise that wonderful parody of one of the songs and a character featured in The Simpsons episode about the monorail. 

So I finally saw it and was not only charmed by it... I immediately leapt onto the computer to grab one of the last remaining copies of the movie version soundtrack from that well known website named after a tribe of women who used to cut their own breast off in order to improve their use with a bow and arrow (more coverage of that in a future blog probably never but, I like to throw these little pieces of dubious info in from time to time). I had to source a copy of the film on American Blu Ray because there just seems to be a dearth of the genre available in that format in the UK at the moment. C’mon people... we want more high definition musicals!

Okay... so... adapted from the very long running Broadway smash by Meredith Wilson (and including many more songs which never made it to the stage version but were indeed written for it at one point or another), The Music Man tells the story of Professor Harold Hill... not a professor but, instead, a conman who goes from town to town selling the proposition of a boy band with instruments and music, swindling people out of dollars and keeping his neck out of deep water with a little bit of oomph and pizazz.

Hill is played by Robert Preston, blessed with more than a regular helping of that particular oomph and definitely a large side order of said pizazz, who made the show his own on stage but was nearly passed up for the movie by Warner Brothers, who wanted someone bigger. It apparently took Cary Grant to both refuse the part and furthermore tell Warner Brothers that he wouldn’t even go to see it in cinemas if Preston wasn’t in it, to seal the deal. 

Preston’s love interest, the target of his initially false affections until the con backfires on his emotional wellbeing, is Shirley Jones (pregnant at the time with young Patrick Cassidy, of TV fame) who does a wonderful job. Preston’s friend, in on the con, is Buddy Hackett and, playing Jones’ very young brother, is the then seven year old Ronny Howard. Yep. The same red headed kid who would grow up to star in films like American Graffiti, hang out with The Fonz in Happy Days and, of course, be a major modern film director, still, at time of writing. 

And it’s all just wonderful. Shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the film is very well designed with frames based, as far as I could see, on vertical rectangles in the composition to divide up the screen to highlight elements of the story. Not to mention some wonderful transitions where, towards the end of a scene, everything apart from the principal actors will suddenly fade to pitch black, revealing the artifice of the stagey setting in what I can only describe as a ‘soon to be’ Godardian manner. Although, I guess at that time, it’s probably more akin to Brechtian theatre? Lars Von Trier would cerrtainly know, I suspect. ;-)This technique is also used to softly pull frames out and set them aside each other in a kind of masked split-screen, so songs and their counterpoint can be put together and shown from different scenes simultaneously, at one point. 

And Robert Preston is just amazing in this. What a vibrant personality this guy has, as he fast talks his way out of everything and then makes a little, throw away hand-dusting motion every time he gets over a little hurdle in his con game. Talk about buckets full of charisma. 

And the songs are... well, you always get a couple of duds... but the majority of them are not just great, they’re multilayered with the lyrics doing an abnormally large amount of heavy lifting when it comes to plot exposition, Which sounds bad but it in no way makes them any less charming. On the contrary many of them are very clever and... I’m guessing very hard to learn with some of the dense sets of layers bounding off each other. There must have been an awful lot of rehearsals in this production.

And, yeah, I’m not going to say much more on The Music Man, I’m just going to leave it for you to discover for yourself if you haven’t already, except to say that as much as Meredith Wilson made from this show, the film and the profit percentage... it was actually surpassed by the amount of money he made from The Beatles cover version of ‘Til There Was You from this musical... which is not a song I like but, there you go. But, yeah, give this movie a go because it’s very cool. 

Return To Silent Hill

Dodgy Pyramid Scheme

Return To Silent Hill
Directed by Christophe Gans
France/United States/United Kingdom/
Germany/Serbia/Japan 2025
Entertainment Film Distributors
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: A hill full of spoilers herein, I guess. 

Well, okay then. 

I was kinda looking forward to a third Silent Hill movie when it was announced, especially since it’s directed by Christophe Gans, who did the first movie and who also directed the masterpiece that is Brotherhood Of The Wolf (reviewed by me here). This third film, Return To Silent Hill, is kind of a soft reboot for the franchise in that the only returning characters I could detect here are the grotesque nurses and, of course, Pyramid Head.

However, it has to be said that, for a good deal of the running time I was a bit disappointed in this one (although for the first half an hour or so I was convinced this would be the best of the three to date). I certainly had no problem with the lack of context to the surrealistic nightmare that was the town of Silent Hill and all that goes on in its environs, that’s for sure. And following an almost optimistic, love story approach to the opening of the story, the quick spiral into the main lead (played by Jeremy Irvine) going to the town in question in search of his girlfriend (played by Hannah Emily Anderson) and the driven, unflinching and unrelenting plunge into frequent, morbid and nightmarish suspense was something which initially had me on the edge of my seat. Again though, only for about half an hour or so until I figured out something... and here’s where my short review gets kinda spoilery folks. 

After a direct confrontation between the male lead and the fan favourite Pyramid Head, I figured out something pretty basic about the nature of these two and so I stopped caring about what was going to happen to the anti-hero of the piece. If I’m not very much mistaken (and it’s made both clear and then obscured or muddied by the last sequence of the film, as I see it), then the main protagonist is also an aspect of Pyramid Head, from what I could tell... or did I get that wrong? He’s just a self induced metaphor for the horrors of Silent Hill. That’s my interpretation of the visual data here, at least. 

So after this... I knew he couldn’t come to any harm and I kinda stopped caring (although it’s not made implicit until near the end of the movie for the ‘hard of thinking’, it seems to me). And, although the film is well made in terms of inventiveness (presumably culled from the video game Silent Hill 2, which I’ve not played myself, only the first one) and it’s very well put together, I had a few other problems with the movie too. 

One of those is... it’s not all that scary. Which should be a cardinal sin for a film in this particular franchise. For instance, the sexy, mutant nurse thingies which were such a marvelous and terrifying element of the first two movies, seem to have absolutely no visual impact here at all. It almost feels like the director has included them because people expect them to be here. But the effect of them is totally diluted and they seem an easy enough challenge to overcome. 

And the other big thing which really unsettled me was the way in which some of the acting was rendered. Especially the main lead played by Jeremy Irvine. Now congratulations to Gans if this was indeed supposed to look flat and clumsy like a video game interpretation of living human beings but, I don’t know, was it something in the make up or lighting that made me feel that Irvine wasn’t even on set. He felt, a lot of the time, like a bad CGI render of a person, much like you would find in a game. And it was totally off putting and maybe contributed to my personal apathy in regards to this film. I am caring much less about manipulated pixels and much more about flesh and blood when I watch a movie. It’s almost like the director ran a filter or some such thing over some of the main characters to make them seem more lifeless than perhaps they should have been. So, if it was a deliberate choice then well done for making me think I was watching a video game but... yeah, I don’t want to see a video game when I’m sitting in a cinema. I want to see something that will move me or connect with me on an intellectual level, rather than break everything down to something somewhat lesser than the sum of its pixels. Which is sadly what happened here for me. 

And so that’s my main takeaway from Return To Silent Hill, I’m afraid. It started off well like a white knuckle ride but steadily lost any traction as I lost empathy for any of the characters or the situations they found themselves in. What I thought would be my favourite film in the franchise turns out to be the worst entry in the series. So, yeah, nothing more to say on this one, I’m afraid, That’s me done on these for a while.  

The Vault Of Horror

 

Taking It EC

The Vault Of Horror
UK 1973 
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Amicus/20th Century Fox  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: A vault of spoilers. 

The Vault Of Horror was another of the Amicus portmanteau horror films with which they had a lot of success and, as the title suggests, the five stories found within (not including the framing story, I would guess) are adaptations from various 1950s EC comics, repeating the formula from their Tales From The Crypt movie (reviewed here). Despite the title and what it claims on the opening credits, which play out mostly over shots of London, none of the stories in the film are actually taken from the original The Vault Of Horror comic... instead, the segment entitled The Neat Job is taken from an issue of Shock Suspense Stories while the others are versions of stories first published in the pages of Tales From The Crypt. 

The film starts off with an elevator picking up various of the five main characters, played by Michael Craig, Curd Jürgens, Terry Thomas, Daniel Massey and Tom Baker. They are all going down but, down way further than any of them expect, as the elevator deposits them all in an underground chamber. They can’t get the elevator to take them back and so, for the rest of the film, they exchange stories about various nightmares which have been bothering them, allowing the audience access into the five segments which make up the majority of the film’s running time. 

Now, I’ve actually read four of these stories but only remember three of them in terms of a little of the details, because I read the entire run of Tales From The Crypt a few years back. So in the first story, I can definitely tell you that the term adaptation is loosely used. Don’t get me wrong, we still have the same story and the final panel of the comic is rendered as the final shot of that story but, yeah, it’s been watered down somewhat.

To explain, the first story is based on the Tales From The Crypt story Midnight Mess. In this, Daniel Massey pays a private detective who goes to find his lost sister, who has been left everything after their father has died. The detective, played by Mike Pratt (Randall, from Randall And Hopkirk Deceased) finds her but is killed by Massey, who then goes to find his sister. He can’t get served in a restaurant because it closes early in the village she is staying in, so he goes to her house and kills her. He then goes back to the restaurant, which now appears to be open. However, when he’s served dishes made from blood and human flesh, he complains and gives himself away. The waiter pulls back the big curtains in the restaurant to reveal a big mirror... casting only his reflection. All of the other diners are vampires, including his sister who also has a drink when the patrons set him up in the bar as a human bar tap, syphoning his blood ‘fresh from the source’ as the still alive Massey has a tap plugged into an open wound on his neck. Incidentally, his sister is played by real life sister Anna Massey. 

The problem with this segment... and why it’s watered down, in my opinion... is that in the original comic book, the lead character was an innocent. He doesn’t kill anyone but he suffers the same fate anyway... with the last panel being much more graphic in its depiction, if memory serves. I get the feeling the writers here turned him into an evil character so that it feels morally right to have him killed in such a grim fashion. Which kinda weakens the story but, there you go, this film pulls its punches a bit, that’s all. 

The next segment, The Neat Job, is the one told by great British comic actor Terry Thomas, where he marries a character played by actress Glynis Johns. This one is actually quite fun and you can tell these two must have really enjoyed working on this. It turns out that, after they are married, the wife finds out her husband is one of those people with a mania for neatness and everything in its proper place... with even his tool room with jars for each different kind of screw thread or length, kitchen cupboards with tick boxes to indicate stock replenishment etc. After a while, her attempts to please her husband culminate in a sequence where she bumbles about and manages to wreck a couple of rooms as she tries to re-tidy them for him when he comes home. On his discovery of the shambles, she deals him a huge hammer blow and we see the comedian with a claw hammer sticking out of the top of his head before he topples. In the final scene of this story, his wife has pulled out all his various body part and internal organs and put them all in correctly labelled, categorised jars. 

The third story is This Trick’ll Kill You and it’s features a stage magician played by Curd Jürgens and his wife played by Dawn Addams. While on holiday in India, looking for magic tricks, he stumbles onto a really good version of the old Indian rope trick but he can’t persuade the young lady performing the trick to sell it to him at any price. So he arranges a private show for his wife in their hotel room and, while the girl is performing the trick, he stabs her dead. He then re-performs the trick and his wife climbs up the rope but, suddenly, she disappears at the top of the rope and a slowly spreading puddle of her blood forms on the ceiling where the rope was leading too. The rope then gets out of control and has its revenge on Jürgens. 

The fourth story, Bargain In Death, is the worst of the five and features Michael Craig in a dire and slight tale of a man who slows his heart to fake death so he and his friend can split the insurance money... and then expects his friend to dig him up but, obviously, that part doesn’t happen. He does get dug up though, by a gravedigger played by Arthur Mullard at the request of two young medical student friends who need the body. In a curious piece of what would now be called stunt casting, the two med students are played by Robin Nedwell and Geoffrey Davies, who were known as the ‘comedy doctor’ duo in the long running British TV sitcom Doctor In The House. The other nice part of this is when one of the characters is seen reading the novelisation of the Amicus Tales From The Crypt movie.

The fifth story, Drawn And Quartered, stars Tom Baker as a British artist living in Haiti. When an old friend stumbles on him, he finds out that his old agent who had deemed his paintings worthless and bought them for a song, has colluded with an art critic and buyer and his paintings are now fetching high prices in London. So he goes to a voodoo man who gives his painting hand magical powers and he returns to London to take his revenge. Anything he paints and then erases or destroys gets erased or destroyed in a similar fashion and so he paints the three and causes them pain and death by taking their hands or eyes or, in the case of his agent, played by Denholm Elliot, gets him to shoot himself due to drawing a red dot on the forehead of the painting. However, he shouldn’t have left his own self portrait out in the open after he found leaving it in his safe was depriving him of oxygen after a while! Any kind of accident could happen to it. 

And that’s the five stories and then, of course, the elevator doors open to a graveyard and it turns out the men are all dead and forced to tell the same stories to each other for eternity. However, unlike the comics, the Vault Keeper who used to present the tales didn’t make it into the movie.

But it is an entertaining movie and it’s easily one of my favourites in the Amicus portmanteau horror series, falling just behind Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (reviewed by me here). Roy Ward Baker’s direction is assured and, once again, he uses some interesting camera movements... like that trick he does where he will zoom into something at the end of a camera pan to change the focus of the frame. Douglas Gamley’s score is also pretty good and he seems to use the Dies Irae musical motif a lot throughout the movie (darn, I wish there was a soundtrack CD to this one... or to any of Gamley’s music, to be honest). 

And, yeah, not much else to add to this. The Vault Of Horror, despite being the only one of the Amicus horror portmanteaus that didn’t star Peter Cushing, is a really entertaining little film and one I would happily watch a number of times. Something about the print or transfer on this seemed a little dodgy, I thought but, it’s still pretty watchable and I’m sure the Blu Ray authors have done the best they can with the materials. Definitely worth a look sometime if you are into this period of British horror movies, for sure.

Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo

 

Scooby Diving

Zoinks! The Spooky 
Folklore Behind Scooby Doo
By Mark Norman
Chin Beard Books and Oak Tree Books
ISBN 9781837916702

Well this was a pretty fantastic Birthday present for me this year, it has to be said. I originally saw it on BlueSky when one of the people I follow, Raskolnik highlighted it in a post and, it turns out Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo, pretty much does what it says on the tin, written by a leading UK folklore scholar who I will need to look into at some point in the future, for sure. 

The book is split into seven chapters, bookended by an intro and outro from figures behind the scenes of various of the many variants of the show through the years, not to mention a large appendix of episode guide style lists too. Right away from the start, I was hooked in by the author with Chapter One, Colleges and Cannabis - Scooby Doo Legends In The Real World. 

And this one is a little different from most of the other chapters in the book, in that it investigates the myths created by the show itself and its influence on the world around it... before diving into the other chapters which live up, in no uncertain terms, to the title of the book. This chapter was extremely illuminating for this particular reader, as I haven’t seen many iterations of the show over the years, it has to be said. For example I discovered that, while Scooby-Doo is written... well,  as I just wrote it... in the majority of TV and film properties of the brand, the original first two seasons from the 1960s and 70s correctly write it as Scooby Doo. This is because Doo is actually Scooby’s family name, with Scooby itself being a shortening of his real name, one Scoobert Doo.

Also, although she’s had occasional relationships with men in the series, it would seem that Velma is actually written as a lesbian. And did you know that the term ‘jinkies’ comes from a historical and less blasphemous version of ‘By Jove’? And, furthermore, ‘Zoinks!’ might well have derived from ‘gadzooks’, or rather ‘God’s hooks’. The writer also discusses how much of the folklore of various areas and times was either fuelled by... and in some instances completely created from thin air... various smugglers over the years, in order to keep upstanding citizens, or possibly just some ‘meddling kids’, away from their areas of operation, by scaring people off with the imagery and ‘cosplay’ of said myth. 
 
Chapter Two, Landscape And The Gothic looks at the visual tropes of the ‘state of being gothic’ such as run down crumbling architecture and the appearance of the full moon. Indeed, it even shows how a crescent moon on the show set in one night will suddenly become a full moon for events taking place on the next night, purely to fulfil that gothic vision and tone of the show, flying in the face of continuity. 

Chapter Three, Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghosts is an interesting chapter also, with many stereotypes of ghosts from various literary wells explained, especially as to how they are visually depicted. For instance, in the mid fifteenth to eighteenth century, it was common for the recently deceased to be wrapped in a winding cloth or shroud and be placed in the ground wrapped in that... because only the wealthy could afford such luxury items as a coffin. Hence the depiction of ghosts as being seen as sheet wearing spirits. Reports of a ghost in Hammersmith in 1803 further fuelled this depiction. Also covered in this chapter... which I won’t go into too much here... are the origins of the visual variant of some ghosts being depicted bound in chains and also the variant of an empty, animated suit of armour. As well as such phenomena as mirror ghosts, curses, Crystallomancy, seances, psychics, spirit boards, Knockers in mines and Civil War ghosts.

Chapter Four, Snips and Snails, Witches in Scooby Doo, looks at such things as Tasseomancy and the derivation of the term hag coming from ‘Hægtesse’, which means witch in Middle English. While Chapter Five, Indigenous, Ancient and Non-Western Cultures looks at cryptids such as the abominable snowman, big foot, Japanese dragons, Chinese dragons, Jinn and even at places like Shangri La or communities such as the Mayan and Aztec Civilisations.

Chapter Six, Urban Legends and Folklore Motifs looks at exactly that, with such star performers as Spring Heeled Jack from Victorian times. It also accredits Richard Dorson as the person who first came up with the term ‘urban legend’ in 1968. Very interestingly, it looks at how familiar and reinvented modern legends are, in fact, not modern inventions at all but ones which have echoed down through history over the years. So the myth of alligators living and growing in the sewers saw its predecessor in Roman times, where it was believed that there were octopuses living in the sewers. 

The seventh and final chapter, Thoroughly Modern Scooby gets very up to date with stuff such as the recent rise of the fear of clowns and the, perhaps not so modern, alien abduction phenomenon. Not to mention entering the somewhat dodgy realms of AI. 

And it’s an absolute joy to read, rendered in an entertaining writing style with lots of fun, informative facts. My one criticism would be in reference to the Scooby Snack. While noting that capsules made from psychedelic mushroom psilocybe cubensis are nick-named Scooby Snacks in the real life drug community, after the show, the writer informs us that said treat was not in the show until the 1980s... a relatively modern phenomena. However, this didn’t quite ring true to me and it glitched in my brain... so I went back to my CD recording of the original theme song from 1969 and found the Scooby Snack is definitely mentioned in the lyrics. Perhaps in a more general sense of a plethora of snacks in the show but, nonetheless, it’s right there. 

But it’s a minor criticism and, all in all, I’d have to say I was completely blown away by Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo and it’s a hard recommend for me. I might have to track down the original show I remember growing up with in the early seventies as repeats on the BBC if I can find a decent Blu Ray at some point. Although I have bad memories of canned laughter plaguing the show too. But, however that pans out, this is a truly excellent book by a very entertaining writer and shouldn’t be missed, if this is the kind of thing you are interested in.